From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Apr 15 01:30:53 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5757716A400 for ; Sun, 15 Apr 2007 01:30:53 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd001@freeode.co.uk) Received: from mail.freeode.co.uk (mail.freeode.co.uk [87.127.24.125]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DE72D13C46C for ; Sun, 15 Apr 2007 01:30:52 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd001@freeode.co.uk) Received: from lexx.freeode.co.uk (lexx.freeode.co.uk [10.10.10.2]) by mail.freeode.co.uk (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id l3F1UpRG031072 for ; Sun, 15 Apr 2007 02:30:51 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from freebsd001@freeode.co.uk) From: John Murphy To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 02:30:51 +0100 Message-ID: X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Ubuntu stole my FreeBSD... X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: freebsd001@freeode.co.uk List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 01:30:53 -0000 But thanks to the FAQ entry on booting FreeBSD and Linux using GRUB at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/disks.html#GRUB-LOADER I was able to get it back again (except the file which I edited was /boot/grub/menu.lst). I had resisted the temptation to install any Linux flavour for many years, but all the talk about Ubuntu had me intrigued. So I decided to install Xubuntu on my old Packard Bell Easynote. It can only do 800x600 so the first surprise was that the buttons to proceed from Ubiquity's location chooser dialogue were hidden behind the lower task bar. The window could not be re-sized or scrolled and it took me a while to work out how to move the task bar to the side. The problem would be much worse for anyone restricted to 640x480 and I was surprised to find the bug was first reported over a year ago! The laptop previously triple booted Windows 2000, FreeBSD and NetBSD and the fourth primary partition was reserved for data. The NetBSD slice was to be overwritten with the new installation. Had to create an 'extended' partition in place of the NetBSD one and then make a swap and ext2 file system within it. It was going to create mount points for my FAT slices, which I didn't particularly want, so I deleted those and found I had to return to the gpart screen and do it all again because it insisted on mounting those slices. I would have been quite happy to leave the boot manager as it was and add an entry for the new OS, but there was no option to do so and, even though the Windows installation was recognised and an entry in the boot manager was created, the FreeBSD one was not. The installation was successful, but it seems odd to not have a root user. To make the changes to grub required a command like: 'sudo editor /boot/grub/menu.lst' and then the unprivileged user pw. I must admit it looks nice, but the only thing it'll get used for is creating ext2 file systems on Compact Flash cards destined for my Psion 5mx. Couldn't find a way to do that from Free. -- Thanks, John.